Rumours of Tim Krul leaving Newcastle United show how some transfer reporting works

Tim Krul, tucked up in his injury sick-bed, will probably now be aware of the rumours linking him with a move to Barcelona. They've made their way to the English newspapers and, without slapping ourselves on the back too much, that's exactly what we said would happen when we followed the trail of the rumours two days ago.

It's all based on a big pile of Chinese Whispers with nothing to back them up but his agent will also now know and the links will be remembered for the next time contract negotiations are brought up. Whether they are a pile of rubbish is irrelevant.

Krul is unlikely to be unsettled by the links, he values the chance of being Holland's first choice goalkeeper too much to settle for life as a substitute at Barcelona, but that doesn't negate the possibility of the situation being a headache for Newcastle United at some point.

The Mirror today say:

The Daily Mail say:

The Mail say their source is The Mirror but the latter refer to no source at all, giving no credit to any previous reports. Now, it's fair to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume they've got all the information themselves rather than picking it up from elsewhere, but this is what we reported on Tuesday about how stretched the Tim Krul to Barcelona stories were:

Newcastle United fans must be quite worried, and irritated, by growing rumours linking Tim Krul with a move to Barcelona. We saw it popping up in a few places so decided to follow a trail back to see if we could find out where the 'news' was coming from and how much truth - if any - there is in it.

Caught Offside have today reported that Barcelona want Newcastle's Krul as a replacement for the departing Pinto, whose contract will not be renewed at the end of the season. They link TMW as where they got their story from, the full piece on the Italian website is:

According to Spanish media Barcelona would be looking for a goalkeeper to ensure adequate coverage in the event that Victor Valdes should not be available in the future.The name on the notebooks leaders Barca would be to Tim Krul, the Newcastle goalkeeper.

TMW is a website which collates transfer gossip, unfortunately they don't often give a concrete source, and in this case it meant we had to go to Spain (not literally, unfortunately) and see what we could find.

AS, a major Spanish newspaper, are reporting it on their website today as are Fichajes, a Spanish transfer rumour website. However, both of these simply they are reporting the rumours previously carried by the two sentence article in Italy. This is Spanish media reporting Italian media reporting Spanish media, keeping up?

That obviously wasn't the bottom of the story so we continued to search.

On September 15th, another Spanish news source - Nuevo Football - also ran with the rumour but they said they had got it from The Mirror in England. There is no mention, that we can find, from The Mirror about this possible transfer.

So back to Spain...

The Italian website TMW which we mentioned before, also have a Spanish version and they covered the story but unlike their Italian owners they claimed the original news had come from the British media, and not those in Spain.

It was all starting to get a bit like the film Inception, but then we found the source! And, unsurprisingly, it's merely a website which thinks up rumours. Fichajes.net (different to the one above) say that Barcelona are interested and could make a bid, and this is where all this has come from. We read many international newspapers and rumour websites daily and this site is a new one to us.

Today they say it's Reina who could be going to Barcelona, but yesterday they said he wasn't going anywhere. This Krul from Newcastle United to Barcelona story is growing and will no doubt end up in our own tabloids, when it does it's worth remembering the trail of how the 'news' came to light.

Reports from a small Spanish transfer rumour website end up as newspaper news in England a week later? You decide.